Nuremberg Review

As any history buff will know from the title, Nuremberg sets itself after World War II. While the Allies can’t put Hitler on trial, they can make an example of his closest followers. The ensuing tribunal provides a global stage to spotlight the atrocities that took place, helping to ensure history won’t repeat itself. Of course, if recent events are any indication, humanity seems to be making the same mistakes generations later. The Führer may be dead, although everything he stood for endures, and not just in the defendants accused of war crimes.

There’s a scene towards the end of Nuremberg where military psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) argues that Nazism isn’t just alive in a post-war world. It’s infiltrated the United States. Others view Kelley’s comments as unpatriotic. Through a modern lens, his warning should’ve been heeded. With ambitions to write a book, Kelley is tasked with analyzing the captured Nazis. The toughest nut to crack is Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command. Göring relents that Germany lost the war, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all over.

The two men get inside each other’s heads, seemingly developing a mutual respect for one another that might even be friendship. Kelley also expresses empathy for Göring’s wife and daughter, feeling they shouldn’t be punished for the family patriarch’s crimes. That said, Göring’s charming demeanor doesn’t excuse the unspeakable acts he’s committed. This only becomes more apparent to Kelley as he witnesses footage from concentration camps. Although Film Twitter has had it out for Malek ever since he won the Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody, he provides Nuremberg with a strong moral center as a man forced to confront a hard truth: Nazis are monsters, but they’re also human, which scares him most of all.

Nuremberg is a strong ensemble piece with great supporting work from Michael Shannon as Robert H. Jackson, Richard E. Grant as David Maxwell Fyfe, and Leo Woodall as Sgt. Howie Triest. If one performance leaves something to be desired, it’s sadly Crowe as Göring. Crowe is an actor who can sometimes uncannily lose himself in a role (A Beautiful Mind, The Insider). Other times, he sticks out like a sore thumb (Les Misérables, Winter’s Tale). His performance as Göring falls into the latter, with an accent that’s only slightly less distracting than the one he put on in Kraven the Hunter.

Watching Crowe, I couldn’t help but think about how well-cast Mark Rylance was in another historical courtroom drama, Bridge of Spies. Obviously, these two figures were very different, Rudolf Abel being far more sympathetic than Hermann Göring. Much like how Rylance wasn’t as well-known to American audiences when he landed that part, though, Göring needed a character actor of similar stature. A fresher face who could escape into the part. Whenever Crowe is onscreen, I don’t see the embodiment of Nazi Evil. I see a bankable name giving a performance.

Crowe’s miscasting may hold Nuremberg back from greatness, but it’s hard to find fault in the rest of the ensemble or director James Vanderbilt’s screenplay. For most of his career, Vanderbilt has been stuck writing for popcorn pictures (The Amazing Spider-Man, Independence Day: Resurgence). He turns in easily his best script since David Fincher’s Zodiac, another film about a man who becomes obsessed with a monster. Where Robert Graysmith never met the Zodiac Killer, Kelley gazed into Göring’s eyes and soul, assuming he had one. Nuremberg is a well-written drama, with one of the simplest lines also being among the most poignant and timely: “Do you know why it happened here? Because people let it happen.” That’s precisely what’s happening now, too.